tax the crap out of the recycle place that buy stolen copper wire they know its stolen so tax them
I tend to agree with that.
An often overlooked piece of the scrap metal theft issue is the scrap yards.
No better evidenced than with buying catalytic converters.
You know as well as I do those are stolen probably 99% of the time and scrap yards buy them......all that does is embolden thieves to keep stealing them.